Luxury Real Estate Marketing: The "You" Perspective

If you need a mental boost and a new perspective on your luxury real estate marketing practice, here is a tip for you. Get the idea that you are a man or woman living in China and you are granted the wish of stepping into YOUR life, taking over YOUR exact set of circumstances including your business. See YOUR life from their perspective with fresh, appreciative eyes. Wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity of getting to be YOU?

It is all too easy to complain about the economy or wallow in self-doubt or self-pity. Get over yourself and begin your life anew.

Part of the problem you may be experiencing is a result of commoditization, which has rendered your brand of doing business virtually indistinguishable from your competition. In luxury real estate marketing, commoditization occurs when one agent or company’s service offering cannot be differentiated from another. For example, the introduction of the IDX, which gave consumers free access to the local MLS on real estate websites, commoditized that information and leveled the competitive playing field in that aspect of the business.

If you are hard pressed to articulate your extraordinary promise of value as distinct from your competition, you may be suffering from commoditization. But, do not despair! There is always a way to bounce back. The antidote to commoditization is to identify an underserved or uncontested market niche and dominate it with passion! Combining your personal passion with business opportunity is the ticket to success.

Here is the story of Zhu Jin, a 36 year old Chinese woman who seized an opportunity to rise above a sea of competition by creating a luxury service business in a highly commoditized field—the flower business. She bravely moved from being a rural flower grower, where she was faced with fierce competition, to opening a tiny flower store in an exclusive office building in the capital city of the Sichuan province, catering to high-end customers.

Zhu capitalized on her natural artistic talent and her passion, the desire to make people happy with the gift of flowers. She now has six flower stores and nearly 40 employees. To manage cost, supply and demand for exotic flowers, she reinvested her profits and now grows her own.

Zhu did not fall prey to commoditization. She found a way to deliver extraordinary value to an underserved market niche, and rendered her competition irrelevant. Imagine if she had YOUR opportunities and could become YOU instead of Zhu!